WeStillHavePetRocks
Characters in the Chakat universe can make jokes about obscure comic book characters, passing fads, and The Macarena, and nobody bats an eye. Everybody laughs at the jokes and no one has to explain what they meant, even though it's thousands of years in the future and nobody knows what Pet Rocks and Pokemon are anymore. Yet, in this same universe, there are contradictions to this concept, such as this: "Talking of letters, the Captain has a hobby. Shi makes hir own paper somehow – I don’t know if shi’s got a little replicator program or if shi does it by hand, and shi writes out notes and letters in ink, using old style ink pens! I saw hir the other day... shi was using a pencil! At first I didn’t recognise what it was – it’s a little stylus sized piece of wood with a soft graphite core you can use just like modern pencils, but shi was sharpening it using a tiny little folding knife, and I thought shi was wood carving!" Source: www.chakatsden.com/chakat//Stories/TalesFromTheNightWatch-1.htm Yes, it may not have happened in the same story by the same author, but Chakat stories are for the large part hosted on one website, and the stories share the same universe, characters, and tons of other things. 90% of them contain references to the Gene Wars and war monuments in the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam. Why can't they share temporal consistency in other areas? For example: Sungazer stopped, before shi glanced at Copper. "You've just reminded me of something, hun. Mathematics." Shi shook hir body a bit, the rain streaming down off hir fur coat. "What was it?" shi murred aloud. "There's something at the edge of my memory. It was a primitive calculating device." Copperhead hummed, tilting hir head while looking at Sungazer. "Oh? What type was it?" shi asked back. "That old one with gears and pulleys? Or are you thinking of Brainiac? Or whatever that first computer made from vacuum tubes was named?" Sun snickered. "No, Copper. Brainiac was the name of a major villain that fought with Superman in the days before DC remade him in the mid-eighties or so. No, this was something even older." Shi paused, then brought up hir paws, making motions in the air. "It was a series of rods, with small beads placed upon each rod. Ah, now I remember. Anabacus. That's what it was called." -source: www.chakatsden.com/chakat//Stories/Gazing.html It sounds like these people came from an Idiocracy type of future society. And frankly, nobody would ever remember DC's Braniac. It wasn't on television. But there was a Mythbuster type show called Braniac, which probably should have occurred to them before obscure comic book characters.But since we've already gone on this brain dead tangent, why not extend it by saying something like "Abacus? Wasn't that a rock band?" Or "Are you sure that wasn't a credit card company?" Examples: In "Recovery" by Adrian Nunenkamp (www.chakatsden.com/chakat/Stories/Recovery01.htm), there is a Halloween party coming up, and one of the characters says, "Sitsi? What do you think of me going as Lady Godiva?" However, culture has a long track record of forgetting the past. This is slightly different from forgetting the Robot and the Macarena in the fact that Godiva provides a more valuable historical lesson. However, people have forgotten all the things that Shakespeare said were in fact said by Shakespeare, and they've forgotten that the Civil War was fought more for economics and rail transportation than slavery, so it's unlikely that the story of this famous nudist would survive as anything but a brand of chocolate. “He was feeling the walls close in?” Doug asked. Shadowcrest gave him a small smile before singing: “I'm a cosmopolitan sophisticate/Of culture and intelligence/The culmination of technology And civilized experience...(etc)"(from Billy Joel’s Running on Ice) In the center of one of the spotlighted stages was Shadowcrest. Shi was up on hir hind legs; pole dancing to the cheers and catcalls of several of the avidly watching deities. The next table over, Windsong looked as if shi was uncomfortably sitting on something as shi watched hir friend dance. Shadowcrest sensed Neal’s eyes and increased hir bump and grind routine. Neal chuckled when he recognized the soundtrack shi was dancing to, it was Meatloaf’s ‘Good Girls go to Heaven (but the Bad Girls go Everywhere). And Shadowcrest nodded. “Watching him nudge things his way with his little weight brought another one of his songs to mind.” “Which one?” Windsong asked, always eager to learn a new tune. Shadowcrest softly sang, “I ain’t in it for the power/and I ain’t in it for my health. (etc) “Meatloaf,” Doug supplied unhelpfully as they went back to not watching the other group. -Tales of the Folly – The Curse by Allen Fesler I'm not really sure Billy's music (or Meatloaf's) would survive 1000 years without his name being forgotten and some other singer taking the credit.